Why the silence on climate in the US presidential debates?

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Marc Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

“Tricky” Dick Nixon (1969-74) received a warning on the topic from Democratic senator Daniel Moynihan in September 1969.

A Nixon bureaucrat replied:

The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doom-sayers, with, of course, the silent majority in between… One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise.

Those who think we’re powerless to do anything about the “greenhouse effect” are forgetting about the “White House effect”. As President, I intend to do something about it… In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House… We will talk about global warming… And we will act.

They didn’t get on with it, of course, with Bush, then president (1989-93), insisting that targets and timetables for emissions reductions were removed from the proposed climate treaty to be agreed at the Rio Earth Summit, before he would agree to attend. The targets were replaced, and with the younger Bill Clinton making climate an issue, Bush felt it sensible to go to the summit.

I think it’s an issue that we need to take very seriously. But I don’t think we know the solution to global warming yet. And I don’t think we’ve got all the facts before we make decisions. I tell you one thing I’m not going to do is I’m not going to let the United States carry the burden for cleaning up the world’s air. Like the Kyoto Treaty would have done. China and India were exempted from that treaty. I think we need to be more even-handed.

In 2004 Democrat candidate John Kerry landed a blow on Bush at a debate:

The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it’s one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky… Here they’re leaving the skies and the environment behind. If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today, no change, the air would be cleaner than it is if you pass the Clear Skies act. We’re going backwards.

…we’ve got to walk the walk and not just talk the talk when it comes to energy independence, because this is probably going to be just as vital for our economy and the pain that people are feeling at the pump – and you know, winter’s coming and home heating oil – as it is our national security and the issue of climate change that’s so important.

Despite a petition with 160,000 signatures, the debate moderators for the 2012 debate did not put the issue on the agenda.

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO₂ emissions is not the right course for us.

As Governor of Massachusetts he had “spent considerable time hammering out a sweeping climate change plan to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions”.

Why the silence?

I would argue that there are two reasons for the silence in the debates. One is simply down to the politicisation around the issue. As shown above, as recently as 2008 Republican candidates could admit that climate change was happening.

In 2012 only one contender, Jon Huntsman, was willing to do so, and he soon dropped out, with his views dramatically unpopular among Republican voters.

What happened? In two words: Tea Party. The emergence of the hyper-conservative Tea Party Republican faction was the culmination of a longer-term trend of what two American academics call “anti-reflexivity”.

The second reason is more gloomy, because it is more intractable. Those who have denied climate change for so very long will find it very costly – both politically and psychologically – to reverse their position and admit that they have been wrong. Climate change denial has become a cultural position, as academics like Andrew Hoffman have noted.